


Mother's Day

by iceprinceofbelair



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Gen, Neglect, Orphan Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:39:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceprinceofbelair/pseuds/iceprinceofbelair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry is five years old, he makes a Mother's Day card for Aunt Petunia. Follows his experiences of Mother's Day through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Day

**Author's Note:**

> A little ficlet for Mother's Day.

When Harry is five years old, his class spends an entire afternoon making cards for Mother’s Day. Their teacher - a little pixie of a woman with a kind smile called Miss Morningside - lays out coloured card and felt tip pens. She doles out glue sticks and pompoms and pipe cleaners and stencils. The other children immediately rush to the art table to choose their tools. Harry remains in his seat thoughtfully.

He doesn’t have a mother anymore, after all, so he’s not sure if he should still make a card. He can’t even remember what his mother looked like and he doesn’t know her name so maybe it doesn’t count. All the other kids know what to do by the looks of things. They’re comfortable with the idea of Mother’s Day. Harry feels lost at sea.

Miss Morningside is understanding and she suggests two options - he could make a card for his real mother or he could make a card for Aunt Petunia to thank her for being his stand-in mother. She’s accommodating when Harry opts to do both and offers to eat her lunch in the classroom to allow him extra time to finish. Harry doesn’t bother with lunch that day, too busy colouring in a purple bunny on the front of his Aunt’s card.

When he presents Aunt Petunia with her card that afternoon, he’s rewarded with a sharp slap across the face while Dudley gets a hug in exchange for his own creation. Harry thinks he understands. Aunt Petunia isn’t his mother. Maybe it was wrong to make her a card. Still, it hurts a lot when she rips it up and throws it in the bin.

“And what’s that?” She snarls, snatching the other card from him. He lets out a pathetic whimper in protest but he isn’t quick enough to stop her. When she sees the message Harry had painstakingly written out with Miss Morningside’s help, her mouth becomes a thin line and she rips the card once down the middle.

Harry feels like she might have ripped his heart in half too.

She tramples the card into the carpet on her way to the kitchen, snarling at Harry to clean up the mess. He cradles the remaining paper close to his chest and hides it under his blanket in the cupboard before Aunt Petunia can take it from him again.

The next day, Miss Morningside catches him trying to tape the card back together with tears in his eyes and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. When she asks what happened, he simply shrugs.

“I haven’t got a mummy anymore,” he tells her solemnly.

She doesn’t press the issue. Harry is glad. He doesn’t want to talk about it ever again.

~

The following year, Harry has a severe teacher called Mrs Dodds who doesn’t like him very much. When Mother’s Day rolls around, she’s far less sympathetic than Miss Morningside and Harry wishes to be five again. But he’s six now and he’s a big boy and so he doesn’t cry when Mrs Dodds snaps at him to get on with the exercise like everyone else. Harry tries to explain to her that he doesn’t have a mother but she rolls her eyes and tells him to gather his things. She sends him to work in the empty classroom next door where he won’t disturb the other children and he’s left to be supervised by the classroom assistant. 

Harry doesn’t make a card for Aunt Petunia this year. Dudley does. When Harry watches his cousin be thoroughly embraced, he almost wishes he’d made the effort.

(But he doesn’t make her a card the next year either.)

~

When Harry is eight, he makes another card for Aunt Petunia. 

His drawing skills have improved dramatically since his first attempt so this time he asks his teacher if he can go to the library to look for a picture of a petunia to draw on the front. Mr Firth smiles at him understandingly and hands him a hall pass. 

Harry spends the entire afternoon under the watchful eye of the librarian who is quick to scold him for using felt tip pens so close to her precious books. She finds him a book with pictures of flowers and he flips through until he finds a picture of a lilac petunia flower. It’s very pretty, he thinks. Aunt Petunia will surely like it.

He spends hours on the pencil sketch and rubs out so often that the page starts to get fuzzy. He just wants it to be perfect. 

When Mr Firth comes to collect him ten minutes before the bell is due to ring, he is signing his name in careful letters. His teacher listens to his excited babbling about how much he hopes Aunt Petunia likes his card and Mr Firth tells him that  _ of course she’ll like it because it came from you.  _ Harry knows that this is actually likely to be the reason she doesn’t like it but wisely says nothing.

Dudley gives Aunt Petunia his card first and Harry waits until the hugging and slobbery kissing is over before he timidly approaches with his own offering. Any hopes he had had about her being in a better mood after receiving Dudley’s card quickly evaporate when her face crumples in anger. Harry shrinks back instinctively but she grabs his arm nonetheless and shoves him into his cupboard with yells of, “Freak!”

Harry rips the card up himself that night in anger, thinking  _ stupidstupidstupid _ to himself with each new tear. He doesn’t cry though he desperately wants to. Instead, he adds the card he made for his mother, whose name he still doesn’t know, to the small pile under his mattress and tries to remember what life was like before his parents died. 

A flash of green light and a cold laugh are all that spring to mind. 

~

Harry doesn’t make any more Mother’s Day cards for Aunt Petunia. He learns instead to keep his head down, to do his chores and to pretend he’s invisible - especially around Mother’s Day. Each year, Aunt Petunia eyes him warily as though expecting him to present her with another pathetic attempt at earning her love. Harry deliberately keeps his eyes trained on the carpet while Dudley hands over his own card.

It’s the same every year. Harry grows used to it. He still makes cards for his mother and only his Year 6 teacher seems to think anything of it and makes him visit the school counsellor. When the Dursley’s find out, they call him a headcase and “accidentally” lock him out overnight. 

When Harry is nine, he asks his teacher if it’s possible to send letters to dead people. She offers him a sad smile and tells him that lots of people go to Church to do that. So Harry starts going to the local Church on Mother’s Day. The priest always says lovely things about families and Harry likes to sit at the back and pretend that he’s there with his mother and father.

(He also, rather childishly, likes being able to say the word “Father” out loud.)

The first time he goes, he seeks out the priest after Mass and hands him the small stack of cards addressed to his mother, explaining that he wants them to be sent to heaven. The priest, a rather young man with kind brown eyes, smile sadly and calls him  _ Lad  _ and says he’ll do his best.

Harry goes back every year with a new card until he leaves for Hogwarts when he realises that he’s really far too old for such a thing.

~

Harry forgets all about Mother’s Day during his first year, too swept away by magic and mystery to think of much else. That is, until he catches Hermione charming a delicately-drawn card to recite a poem for her own mother. And then he finds the Mirror of Erised and it feels like his heart is going to fall out of his chest because his parents are  _ right there _ but he can’t touch them.

He wants to ask his mother if she got his cards but knows it would be silly. He knows now that the priest was simply indulging him. But still it is tempting.

This year, he knows his mother’s name so he draws a lily on the front and Hermione helps him charm it to sway as though in a gentle breeze. She doesn’t ask questions and Harry thinks she might understand. After all, Hermione is very clever. 

~

The next time Harry makes a Mother’s Day card, he is eighteen. 

When he presents it to Molly Weasley, somewhat abashed, she squeezes him so tight he thinks he might suffocate but he doesn’t ever want her to let go. He relishes in her touch. Never before has he received such a positive response to something so simple. 

Molly reads the card with tears in her eyes and throws her arms around him again, kissing him sloppily on the cheek before she stands the card up right next to the one from Percy. Harry spent ages on this one. The Weasley children (including Fred) stand in all their pencilled glory, waving out from the front of the card. And there is Harry, Ron’s arm around his shoulders, grinning and waving along with the rest of them.

Harry kisses Molly on the cheek softly and says, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

And Harry is sure that, wherever she is, Lily Potter is smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so emotional after writing this that I haven't read it over. It was written in an hour, though, so there may be some typos/tense mix-ups. Sorry!


End file.
